The State Human Rights Commission has ordered the State Police Chief to investigate an 84-year-old woman’s complaint about the harassment and ignominy she suffered for four years after being wrongly incriminated by the police.
Bharathiyamma, an octogenarian victim of a mistaken identity in a criminal case from Kunissery, had written to the Chief Minister and the State Human Rights Commission seeking action against the police for mistakenly arresting her and wrongly subjecting her through the harrowing legal proceedings for four years.
It was with shock and surprise that a court here exonerated her a few days ago following a submission by the original complainant of a 1998 case that Bharathiyamma had not been the accused in his complaint, and that she had been wrongly incriminated by the police on mistaken identity.
State Human Rights Commission Acting Chairperson K. Baijunath on Thursday asked the Director General of Police to inquire into the case and submit a report within a month. The Commission will consider the case in a sitting proposed to be held in Palakkad in September.
Bharathiyamma has complained against the police personnel of South Police Station, Palakkad. The police arrested her in 2019 mistaking her for another woman named Bharathi, who had been facing charges of absconding while on bail in a case filed by a man named Rajagopal from Kallikkad in 1998. The case was against his housemaid named Bharathi for destroying his property.
Bharathi, when arrested in 1998, had apparently given the house name of Bharathiyamma as her address. The police could not trace Bharathi after she was released on bail, and the case remained buried for two decades.
However, after 21 years, the police reached Bharathiyamma’s house and took her into custody, giving her one of the biggest shocks of her life. Bharathiyamma was living alone after her husband’s death. The octogenarian’s earnest implorations fell on deaf ears as the police insisted that she was the Bharathi involved in the 1998 case.
After securing bail from the court, Bharathiyamma faced the legal wrangle for four years. And finally she had to go in search of the original complainant and produce him at the court to get his testimony against her mistaken incrimination.
